


Fledglings

by arbitraryallegory



Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: Gen, Psychological Trauma, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 05:03:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9163357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitraryallegory/pseuds/arbitraryallegory
Summary: A clean break is yet better than a total shattering. Keep that in mind, when you've bent as far as you can go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is quite a bit darker than my usual stuff. Sorry?

He knows the drugs are wearing off because his hands are shaking. He can’t feel them anymore, but he can just see them in the frigid darkness of his cell, gone clawed in their numbness. This is his chance.

**_Karasuma-kun_ **

He jerks, but he doesn’t respond to the voice in the back of his head. He doesn’t have the time to spare, so he ignores it.

He concentrates, tries to will his wings into existence. He doesn’t need the armor, and doesn’t have the focus required to maintain it anyway, but the wings _want_ to come out. He can feel them at his shoulder blades, boiling just beneath the surface.

The door slams open and the brightness stuns him, blinds him just for a few seconds, but it’s long enough for rough hands to immobilize him; for the sharp pain of the injection at his hip. Impotent rage overcomes his survival instincts and he takes a swipe at one of his attackers, viciously satisfied at the yelp he gets. He’s repaid immediately with a backhand, but he has only an instant to feel the pain and taste the blood welling up in his mouth before all his senses dull. His body goes lax and his mind floats away.

**_Karasuma-kun, I know you can hear me_ **

When he comes to, he’s groggy and disoriented, a condition he’s become painfully familiar with. Also familiar: being strapped to a bed, squinting into the glare of fluorescent lights.

“Rise and shine, my birdies!” a cheerful voice calls out, and dread creeps up his spine. A smiling face appears in front of him. The face itself is rather plain, but the eyes are as sharp and cold as icicles.

00426 doesn’t know his name, so he calls him Smiles.

“Tell me who you are,” Smiles croons, coaxing.

He swallows. “Test Subject Zero Zero Four Two Six,” he croaks through his dry throat.

A hand caresses his cheek gently, but is gone before he can recoil from it. “Very good! You pass, my sweet.” The tap-tap of footsteps and then the same question repeated on the other side of the curtain separating the room.

“Umino Tsubame,” says a voice that sounds tired and scared, but somehow insolent too.

00426 closes his eyes and turns his head away.

 ** _Coward_** , Umino says in his head, and even her mental voice is thick with contempt, right before her screams echo through the testing chamber. His hands are clenched, fingernails digging deep welts into the flesh of his palm.

Umino eventually sobs her compliance and gives the correct answer. 00426 wonders if it’s worth it to her every time, this small, short-lived act of defiance; wonders how much longer her mind will survive it intact. He wishes he could speak to her without it being overheard—but he knows there are others like them around, and he won’t risk them overhearing what he has to say and reporting it back to their captors.

He wishes he could tell her that Karasuma Eishi is safe because 00426 exists. That he’s not as strong she is, and could not have remained whole as she has. That he’s somewhere they can’t ever reach him. That he’s thinking, plotting, analyzing, while 00426 takes the endless torture and testing.

But wishes are useless, and dwelling on it will only cause him to do something ill-advised, so he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been in this facility. The drugs he’s on keep him out of it, except in the brief moments when it wears off. He’s been able to verify that they’re testing the range and capability of the Linker and Bellwether combination, but not to what end. And it’s incredibly difficult to skew their results when he doesn’t know what they’re actually looking for.

Then there’s Smiles. If he even suspects they’re withholding on their abilities, he electrocutes them. It’s not even just the pain of it—sustained electric shock causes loss of control of passive bodily functions, which he mocks them mercilessly for. 00426 suspects that’s probably supposed to be worse, but shame is something he doesn’t possess.

Smiles wears some kind of headgear that prevents them from using their abilities on him, but sometimes he brought other people in to assist with his experiments. 00426 has lost count of how many he’s commanded to maim themselves in some way. The worst was the time he was instructed to have a man stab himself in the eye. It had been eerie and gut-wrenching to watch the man slowly puncture his own eyeball without a single whimper or change of expression. 00426 would have preferred screaming. Umino’s sobs from behind the curtain hadn’t compensated.

A door opens off to the side where he can’t see. He doesn’t have long to wait; soon enough, a man is escorted in front of him by two thugs of the type who drug him and move him from one place to the next. They stand there stoically, and 00426 focuses on the man. A filthy old man in tattered clothes, likely homeless. His eyes are cloudy and glazed, and he smiles at them vaguely.

Drugged. A test subject, then. It seems they’d be conducting human trials again today. He hears Tsubame moan softly in denial.

Smiles is at some kind of terminal, engrossed in whatever he sees on the screen. “We’ve established you can’t form the link without touching. Please do so.”

“What are you going to do to him?” Umino cries. She knows from experience it can be nothing good, so why does she bother asking?

“ _I’m_ not going to do anything to him, my sweet little songbird,” Smiles says distractedly. “Do it.”

Her arm is forcibly stretched out so that just her hand comes through the break in the curtain. 00426 reaches over and curls his own around it. In the beginning, she’d grasped it tightly, presumably for comfort. Now she lets it lay limp and unresponsive.

00426 doesn’t know who this stubborn, willful, stupid girl is but his directive is to protect them both to the best of his ability. So that’s what he’ll do, even if she hates him for some of the things he does to accomplish it. He’ll hurt this man because not hurting him will get them hurt in return and that’s unacceptable.

He unfurls his ability and forces her to establish the link. If he can’t protect her from this, he can at least take the decision out of her hands.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Have him touch his nose.”

He does so, followed by a few other simple motions and making him say various phrases. The vagrant is one of the more docile minds he’s worked with.

“Very good. This is going well. Make him put his left hand on that hot plate.”

00426 looks up and sees the plate in question. It glows red and the air above it shimmers with heat. He breaths out slowly and coaxes a body that is not his own to gently lay its hand on something that will hurt it badly. He hears it sizzling and soon the smell of cooking flesh fills the room, turning his stomach. He knows better than to end the test without permission, however, so he keeps the hand where it is. He can hear muffled weeping and squeezes Umino’s hand. She doesn’t respond.

“Excellent! Remove the hand.”

He breathes a sigh of relief through his mouth.

“We’re going to try something a bit different today. Zero zero four two six, I want you to try to stop his heart.”

00426 blinks in confusion. “Is that even possible?” he asks. Umino tries to jerk her hand away, but he doesn’t let go.

“We’ll find out!” Smiles says, remarkably energetic for someone who’s just ordered someone to try to kill a person.

Reluctantly, 00426 looks at the man and orders his heart to stop. Nothing happens. He concentrates a bit harder, and still nothing happens.

“I can’t,” he says finally.

“I don’t think you’re trying very hard at all,” Smiles says mournfully. “Do it, or I’ll start at three and turn it up for every minute you fail. On her.”

00426 froze. Three was the setting on the electricity machine that made Umino scream. What would more than that do to her?

He turns his focus back on the vagrant and commands with all of his will, **_Stop_.** **_Stop beating_**.

The man just stands there stupidly, heart still beating. He can almost hear it, slow and steady _thump-thumps_ mocking him and his panic.

“Three-two-one, well that’s enough time I think.” Smiles flips the switch on the machine and 00426 immediately feels it zip through his own body through Umino’s. He bites down on his tongue and chokes on the blood that slides thickly down his throat.

Umino’s screams tear through his concentration but he heaves and redoubles his efforts. His hand is numb. **_Pleasestopbeating I’m sorry but please!_**

Nothing, _still nothing_! Couldn’t they see it was impossible?

Smiles cuts the voltage and 00426 pants. His muscles still twitch with aftershocks and his vision has gone blurry and wet.

“It’s up to four if you don’t do it in the next minute. Oh, the poor little girl wet herself, how embarrassing!”

00426 looks for the word for what he feels for this man. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to have it, but he does. _Hate_. Hate like Umino. He _hates_ him, and he _hates_ the vagrant too and he _hates everyone_ in the whole world.

**_Stop beating._ **

_Thump-thump_

**_Stop._ **

_Thu_

**_Stop now!_ **

Electricity streams through him, unbearable, overwhelming and he wants it to _stop._ He can hear screaming and he doesn’t know who it is.

**_STOP BEATING._ **

The sound of a heart stopping is both silent and loud, he finds. He feels the old man’s death recoil back through Umino and into him, like his own heart stopping, and his body jerks so hard the restraints holding him to the bed snap.

He’s crying. He can feel the tears hot on his face, sensations clearer than they’ve been in what feels suddenly like years. And he can’t even make use of it. His body is so heavy, and weak as a newborn.

**_Someone please help us._ **

“Omega waves,” someone breathes. “We got it!”

00426 doesn’t have the strength to suss that confusing statement out. He’s trying to make his limbs move. He’s trembling so hard he doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop.

Except he finds it’s not him, or at least not just him. The entire room is quaking.

“What’s that?” Smiles yells. “Well go find out!” The thugs run from the room, but just a few moments later the door flies open again. One-two-three black shapes, quick and indistinct, and 00426 feels himself scooped up as though he were no heavier than a feather. There’s the sound of glass breaking and then, for the very first time he draws in a breath and there’s nothing to it but fresh air.

His savior has some kind of mask on, but he can just barely see through it. Something about him is familiar. _Takayama_ floats through the back of his mind. His body has relaxed on its own like it knows it’s safe. Which makes sense; this body and mind aren’t his, so he defers to them.

They are flying. High, and then higher, until there’s nothing but clouds and sky above them. He can see Umino clinging to another Birdman, shoulders shaking. This one has retracted his mask and is speaking to Umino softly as he cradles her gently. _Sagisawa_ , he thinks. And _Kamoda_ , the big one flitting between Sagisawa and Takayama like a worried hummingbird, not knowing where to settle first. Yet another comes up and kicks Kamoda and starts shouting at him, waving their little arms in agitation. _Griff_.

He snickers softly. _It_ _won’t be long now_ , he thinks, resting his head against Takayama’s chest and closing his eyes. He’s ready to go. He’s served his purpose.

“Who are you?” Takayama asks softly. 00426 opens one eye to peer up at him. His mask is gone now too, and he’s got his head cocked, looking confused but not really suspicious. “You’re not Karasuma.”

“D’sn’t matter,” he slurs. “He’ll be back soon. I was just…his bookmark.”

Sagisawa flies closer, looking pinched and worried still. “We should get—”

But as soon as he gets close enough Umino lunges from his arms, nearly falling in the process, and grabs 00426’s hand; it’s the first time she’s willingly touched him in a very long time. Her fingers are squeezing so tightly he wonders if she’s trying to break his. He wouldn’t blame her if she is. But when he looks up at her, she doesn’t look angry. It occurs to him that even though this is ‘his’ first time seeing her, he’s always known what she looks like. She’s messier than the image in his head, and her eyes are wild, yet somehow calm at the same time. ‘Feral’ he thinks is the word.

But they’re sane. She’s still Umino Tsubame, stubborn and willful and stupid, and he’s so fiercely glad for that, he would willingly suffer a broken hand or even two.

 ** _Help me kill him_** , she says in his head. It only takes him a moment to understand the request and why she’s holding his hand so tightly.

He feels the arms around him tense, but he can’t look away from Umino’s eyes, and in them he sees the incalculable days of fear and helplessness and _pain pain pain_.

His time is limited; he can feel Karasuma Eishi trying to reassert himself. But for now, he’s still 00426 and he remembers the way she’d screamed her throat raw every single day rather than submit. He remembers the way she’d never stopped begging him to help her, long after she’d realized her friend had abandoned her to this useless shell. The way she’d wept at the things he made people do with her ability.

He squeezes back briefly, then gathers himself up to look down at their prison. It’s a remarkably plain-looking building, he thinks inanely. No one would ever look at it and think it was anything other than a simple commercial property full of yuppies in suits.

He sees Smiles on the roof, using his hand as a visor, looking at them. He shouldn’t be able to tell from this far away, but it’s undoubtedly him, even though he's not wearing his anti-ability headgear. The architect of their suffering. He feels his own body’s trembling echoed through the hand holding his and sees Umino staring as well. Her face is expressionless and unease trickles down his spine. She’s already established the link. She’s just waiting on him reach through her.

Karasuma Eishi is struggling harder now, trying to get to the surface. He wants to prevent this, though 00426 can’t see why he should. Every order he’d followed in the name of survival had left a layer of grime he could feel as thick as molasses on his skin. This is something he can finally give to Umino, after all he’s--they've--taken. Wasn’t a bit more dirt on his soul a small price to pay for that?

He focuses on Smiles then closes his eyes; the distance is substantial, but not insurmountable. He’s starting to tear—or perhaps it’s more like a rubber band snapping back into place, only in slow motion.

Test Subject Zero Zero Four Two Six’s last act as a free entity is putting every last bit of his strength into willing a man’s heart to stop.

Karasuma Eishi opens his eyes afterward and he _screams_.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just the beginning.


End file.
